In wireless communication systems radio frequency resources are allocated for communication between base stations and mobile stations. Due to a number of factors, such as governmental allocation of frequencies, interference and the like, there are a limited number of radio frequency resources to allocate for wireless communications. Thus, allocation of radio frequency resources requires careful consideration of a large number of factors, and any particular allocation technique will have drawbacks with regard to other allocation techniques.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional wireless communication system implementing one resource allocation technique. This system includes a base station 105 and two mobile stations 110 and 115. This resource allocation technique allocates sub-channels on the basis of signal quality measurements, such as carrier-to-interference noise ratio (CINR), where more sub-channels are allocated to mobile stations that have better signal quality conditions than mobile stations with worse conditions. This typically results in mobile stations that are located closer to base station 105 being allocated more sub-channels than mobile stations located further away from the base station. In this technique the base station includes a scheduler to allocate the sub-channels, and this allocation technique is referred to as proportional fair scheduling.